I can't deny Python's success, but I wouldn't hold it up paragon of change management, either. 13+ years after the release of Python 3 and 2+ years after 2.7's EOL, I'm still dealing with Python dependencies that don't work on Python 3 because maintainers preferred to pretend that Python 3 wasn't happening and that Python 2.7 would be around forever.
It's confusing as heck trying to figure out what I should even expect to work, because some authors treat it as obvious that their code will work on both Python 2 and Python 3, while other authors treat it as obvious that they still only support Python 2.
I've had a lot less trouble with merged /usr. I guess it's not a fair comparison, but it does suggest to me that there are more important factors at play.
Guido van Rossum openly admits the move from 2 to 3 was a bit of a disaster. I think some of the decisions made since then have been more conservative in a bid to avoid such damage again. And talk of a Python 4 is for the most part academic.
It sounds like the package authors sticking with Python 2 that you're dealing with are just stubborn beyond belief. The rest of the world has moved on whether they agreed with the changes in Python 3 or not. Hopefully if the packages are useful enough to others and the licence allows it, people will fork them and make them work with 3.
>It's confusing as heck trying to figure out what I should even expect to work, because some authors treat it as obvious that their code will work on both Python 2 and Python 3, while other authors treat it as obvious that they still only support Python 2.
I believe grand majority of packages already dropped 2.7 from latest releases, given that it's officially dead for over two years.
It's confusing as heck trying to figure out what I should even expect to work, because some authors treat it as obvious that their code will work on both Python 2 and Python 3, while other authors treat it as obvious that they still only support Python 2.
I've had a lot less trouble with merged /usr. I guess it's not a fair comparison, but it does suggest to me that there are more important factors at play.